Miscellaneous

It’s My Birthday (!)

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birthday letterboard with confetti

It’s my birthday. One year older, one year wiser, that’s what they say.

I think it may have been Jane Fonda who said, “it’s a privilege to get older, because what’s the alternative?” I guess that’s true, if you’re truly grateful to be alive. Sometimes I feel that way.

I used to LOVE my birthdays. I had so many parties growing up; here are a few I remember: Plaster Palace, like a Color-Me-Mine around age 8, my roller rink birthday around age 6, and of course I’ll never forget my 10th birthday at the hair and nail salon. There’s a photo that will live in infamy of all the girls with feather boas and grossly too much stage makeup for 10-year-olds.

Not much has changed
STYLIN!!!
FASHUN, look it up.

Then I got older, and birthdays in college revolved around to-do lists, or oversized poster-board scavenger hunts of things to find and do out at the club. This included, “kiss a police officer,” and other things I’d literally never do as a grown adult with a brain. All of this was of course captured on our digital cameras, which never left our hands, and those photos appeared on Facebook in an album of 60 pictures within 12 hours of getting home and waking in a hangover stupor.

Then came the next phase of birthdays, the themed extravaganzas. There was 24 Ready to Score, where my friends dressed as sports players and I was the ref. There was 29 Neon Sign, which was a boat party, on a not-private boat, but it became that because we kind of took over. Then things became a bit less outrageous but still themed, and instead of a bar crawl we moved the party to the rooftop of my building with Nerdy Thirty.

21st!!
“Find the oldest man at the bar”
Last time I willingly got close to a cop.
23rd Revenge of the Nerds
“Ask someone for a cigarette and break it in half”
REF on the bar!!
First bday with the hubs! Boat Takeover
Neon Sign
Nerds back for Nerdy Thirty

That was 2017. I’m not sure what happened in 2018 and 2019, but once Covid hit, my birthday celebrations really took a hit.

It could have been because I was older, or it could have been because my friends’ group was smaller, or because my hangovers got worse, or because my energy continued to dwindle (probably all of the above), but I also think it’s just because aging became less fun.

I used to adamantly say my favorite holiday was my birthday because it was special, and it was just for me (disregarding the other 20 million people worldwide who have the same birthday). Now, it feels like a cruel demarcation of time that shouldn’t be celebrated. I am pretty sure this feeling is worse when you’re a woman, since our societal value decreases with age, not to mention our waning fertility, but maybe I’m wrong and men feel this way, too.

This year I’m 37 and I mostly spent the week leading up to my birthday thinking about what I thought my life would look like versus what it actually looks like. I thought my family would be complete by now. I thought I’d be in my forever-job. Instead I have a dead kid, multiple degrees I don’t really use, 100K in student loans from my dumb decision to go to law school, new health issues from a pregnancy that resulted in a dead baby, and an uncertain future as far as location, family size, and work are concerned. Basically, everything is “TBD” which is a strange place to be in and celebrate.

I have one piece of the puzzle, my sweet husband, but I’m still figuring out the rest and time is ticking. I’m hopeful I’ll have a living baby this year, and that would be another huge piece of the puzzle. But because of Maliyah, I feel like no matter what puzzle I end up with, there will always be a missing piece and it’s disconcerting.

Every time I don’t think about my age, my doctors bring me back to earth. I was considered “geriatric” even before my first pregnancy, so what does that make me now? Super-geriatric? The more p.c. term now is “advanced maternal age,” but to be honest, that does not make me feel great either. Every ultrasound photo says my age in years and months on the top of the photo, and sometimes I actually forget how old I am until I see that. It seems like the last two years passed in a cloud of grief and anxiety, and the 3 years before that were Covid-years, which we’ve collectively agreed to pretend didn’t happen.

Turning 37 this year, I really feel 32, but I also feel like I’ve lived 100 lives since then.

Two weeks ago, I was at an ultrasound and the tech wished me a happy early birthday and asked if I had any plans. I didn’t. Yesterday, my MFM wished me a happy birthday and semi-scolded me for not having any plans, saying (with a bit too much optimism, IMO) that we should take advantage before our lives change even more.

Honestly, I hadn’t made plans because I just assumed I’d be either in the hospital, or grieving the loss of a second baby by now. Last year I was supposed to be 38 weeks pregnant on my birthday, instead I was 0 weeks pregnant and crying. My big hope and birthday wish for this year was that I’d still be pregnant on my birthday. I really didn’t think it would happen but here I am. Since my ultimate wish came true, I’m happy with that and I don’t need a party.

I’m in a weird spot where every day, I’m one day older, which is kind of depressing, but I’m also one day more pregnant which is great news for the little one who’s still marinating.

This year, that was the only gift I wanted, and so far I have it. Sometimes I miss the big celebrations, the pomp & circumstance, the themes and the dedicated day-of-me, but most times, I’m just chilling on the couch thankful to be pregnant. So, happy birthday to me! From me, in my living room.

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Pregnancy After Loss

The Danger Zone

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white caution cone on keyboard

Here’s a warning up-top: This may be my most boring blog to date. There are a lot of numbers and statistics. That said, it is also possibly my most important blog I’ve ever written. While I’ve never been fully transparent about what happened to me last year during my pregnancy, today seemed like the right time to share since May is Preeclampsia Awareness Month, and May 22 is World Preeclampsia Day.

You will read that my story was incredibly rare. That said, preeclampsia is still one of the leading causes of maternal death in the United States.

American women are more than three times as likely as Canadian women to die in the maternal period, and six times as likely to die as Scandinavians. In every other wealthy country, and many less affluent ones, maternal mortality rates have been falling; But in the U.S., maternal deaths increased from 2000 to 2014. The rate of preeclampsia in the U.S. has increased by 25% in the last two decades and is a leading cause of maternal and infant illness and death. Preeclampsia is responsible for over 70,000 maternal deaths and 500,000 fetal deaths worldwide. Up to 24% of pregnant women with HELLP syndrome and up to 34% of babies die from the condition.

There are a lot of statistics, and in my case, I came down on the wrong side of basically every one, with one important exception: I’m still alive and I could very easily not be.

This blog was a tricky one to write, because my idea of “the danger zone” is very different from other moms. Therefore, even though I know this is my personal blog where I am sharing my personal opinions, I want to start with the disclaimer that, as always, people may feel very differently than I do.

The danger zone in pregnancy is historically prior to 12 or thirteen weeks, or prior to the second trimester. Most people think of the weeks after that as the safe zone for one very specific reason: 80% of miscarriages occur before the 12th week of pregnancy. As someone who has been on the shit end of a statistic before (more on that later), when I see that 80% number, all I see is “1 out of 5 miscarriages happen after that time.” But most (non-traumatized) people don’t think that way. This is why most people announce their pregnancy after 12 weeks. The actual miscarriage danger zone is far more nuanced than that, of course. The rate does not DROP after 12 weeks, it slowly decreases over time, and once you have a confirmed strong heartbeat, a confirmed uterine pregnancy, and a confirmed growth rate, all of these numbers decrease. This can happen far before 12 weeks, even as early as 6 weeks. But in general, people feel “safe” after 12 weeks.

Now that I’m in the loss community, however, I know innumerable ways for babies to die at all different stages. For me, I think about genetic abnormalities such as trisomies, things you might be able to detect in a non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) blood draw at 9 weeks. I think about neural tube or abdominal wall holes or placental leaks, which may be detected by an alpha fetoprotein (AFP) blood test at 15-20 weeks. I think about anencephalies, which may be detected in a 12- or 20-week anatomy scan. And of course, I think about everything that could go wrong after, up until full-term stillbirth, SIDS, school shootings, you name it, I’ve thought about it.

Some of those dangers will literally never go away. There is no “safe zone.”

That said, I have learned from my experience, and from my peers in the loss space, that a person’s individual trauma tends to inform their anxiety and their own fears.

For example, I know a lot of women who experienced early miscarriages by discovering bleeding, so then in a next pregnancy, they fear going to the bathroom because they think they’ll find blood. For me, in this second pregnancy I am always elated to go to the bathroom, because of my whole organ-shifting snafu in my previous pregnancy.

For some women who found out their babies had no heartbeat from a scan in their first pregnancy, they are terrified of ultrasounds in a next pregnancy.

For me, my personal “danger zone” is 20 weeks and up, which is exactly what I am right now, to the day. The rate of miscarriage once you get to 20 weeks is less than .5%, but for me, I feel as if I’m entering the danger zone. The reason for that is, except in EXTREMELY rare cases, the risk of pre-eclampsia begins at 20 weeks.

I’ve never gone into the particulars of my story on my blog before, but the reason my pregnancy ended last year was due to an extremely severe form of pre-eclampsia (“pre-e”), known as HELLP Syndrome. HELLP is an acronym that stands for hemolysis (H) elevated liver enzymes (EL) and low platelets (LP). The severity of HELLP is divided into three classes, and I had the worst kind. Serious illness and death can occur in about 25% of HELLP cases, and most of those deaths occur in the top class, the one I had. That percentage is only the first of many in this post, so strap in.

As I mentioned before, I’ve gotten the shit end of the stick in a LOT of statistics. Let’s do some math, and start at the top. Among pregnant women, 5 to 8% develop pre-e but in the United States, it’s more like 3 to 4% of pregnancies. That means 96-97% of women in the US do not develop pre-e. Unfortunately, I was in the 3-4%.

Of the 3-4% of pre-e cases, 15% of those cases develop HELLP syndrome, 85% do not.  Therefore, I was 15% of the 3-4%. Also, of the 3-4%, 90% of pre-e cases occur after 34 weeks of gestation. Therefore, I was in the 10% of the 3-4%, and then 15% of that.

Let’s do the math another way: HELLP syndrome happens in about 1 to 2 of 1,000 pregnancies, or .1 to 0.2% of all pregnancies depending on the study. HELLP syndrome is typically a third-trimester condition, with most (68%-70%) cases occurring between 27 and 37 weeks of gestation.

For me, I was at 24 weeks when I started showing signs. I haven’t done the exact math, but basically, I was in the 30% of .5% of pregnancies. And the percentage is actually even smaller than that, if you consider the fact that my case was so severe.

Most doctors agree that test results are not alarming until they are “twice the upper limit of normal.” When I checked into the hospital, my liver enzymes were five times the upper limit. By the time they said it was “not safe for me to be pregnant anymore,” which was two days later, my enzymes were 11 times the upper limit. This all happened within 48 hours.

If you’re an optimist, and you’re a believer in “lightning doesn’t strike twice,” then you may be thinking that I am worried about nothing. The statistics are SO small, it couldn’t possibly happen to me again, right? WRONG. Here’s the problem: once you have it once, you’re far more likely to have it again.

More stats… here we go:

Research suggests that for women who had HELLP, the rate of recurrence ranges between 5-19% with higher rates if HELLP developed in the second trimester aka me. Now again, if I hadn’t already been 1 in 100,000,000 or something like that, I’d be calmed by that fact that at WORST, 81% of people do not get it again. But in my traumatized brain, all I see is, “1 in 5 chance this happens again.” When I mentioned in a previous blog about the bravery of pregnancy after loss, this is exactly the statistic I was thinking about.

If you’ve gotten through the numbers, thanks for sticking around. For most people this is boring, and completely irrelevant. For me, I do these calculations literally every day in my mind. I think of the risk factors I have, the gestational age of my baby, his chances of survival, how quickly things may escalate, and the time it will take me to get from my apartment to the hospital. I do math in my head all day every day. No wonder I have trouble thinking or caring about anything else. I’m in a constant loop of risk assessment calculations.

Many experts would say that there is a lot of hope, and that in most cases, even if I get HELLP again, it’s likely to happen later, and less severely. But again, when I see “most cases,” I think, “I’m not most.” I wasn’t “most” last time, and I probably won’t be “most” this time.

As I consider how scared I am, even at 20 weeks, my feelings of jealousy continue to creep in. Just last week, I saw 3 pregnancy announcements on my social media feeds. You’d think I’d be happy, because I have a little bean growing too! But instead, I have begun a terrible habit of zooming alllll the way into the ultrasound photos. I know exactly what I’m looking for, after all, I’ve had many of my own photos on my fridge, 6 with Maliyah, and 7 so far with baby 2.

I look for two very specific things in the social media posts on the scan photos: the gestational age in the ultrasound, and the date. Then I calculate how long they waited to post. The only reason I do this is jealousy. I wish I had the confidence to tell people at 13 weeks. I wish I saw my 12-week scan and thought, “I’m going to bring home a living baby and I’m going to tell everyone!” But I am 7 ultrasounds in, and I still don’t believe that.

If anything, as I enter “the danger zone” today, I think less and less that it will happen. All of a sudden, I am watching my own body like a hawk.

Yesterday, I walked 15,000 steps. I came home and I put up my feet to watch tv and I inspected my legs like a scientist. Were there signs of swelling?

If I feel a possible headache coming on (which I’m prone to outside of pregnancy), I wonder if my brain is swelling.

Every night when it’s almost midnight, I play the constant game of, “am I seeing spots, or do I just need to take out my contacts?”

I leaned down to pick up a pen from the floor today, felt a slight twinge in my side, and wondered if that would be considered “upper right quadrant pain.”

All those bolded words are signs of HELLP. They are signs I knew nothing about last year, and to be honest, I didn’t have any of those symptoms, anyway. But now I know, and now I am VIGILANT. I have never known my body more than I know it now.

You may think that makes me feel safer, and that I will now know when there are signs of things going south, but my previous pregnancy took that from me as well. Last year, when I checked into the hospital, even the specialists were floored by the incongruity of my lab work (BAD), and my physical symptoms (NONE). If the doctors couldn’t believe it, how am I supposed to trust my own body? The doubts and fears I have are creeping in with a vengeance, and I am only on day 1 in the danger zone.

Every morning when I wake up, and every night when I go to sleep, I remind myself of what I can control (taking my meds and trying my hardest to keep my stress down) and what I can’t (everything else). I have no words of wisdom. I have no sage advice. All I have is the fact that I will wake up again tomorrow, and try to get through that day, just like I got through this one. One day at a time, day after day. I have a feeling this herculean task will become more and more difficult as the weeks wear on, as we approach the date I carried Maliyah until, and then after, as well. The danger zone is forever, so I am arming myself for battle.

(Written at: 20 weeks 0 days)

Some Sources:

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Miscellaneous, Wedding

Happy Anniversary to Us!

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If you’ve been here since the beginning, you have known my husband since the aughts (nearly), back when he was emoji-bf. We’ve come a long way; today, we are now married two whole years. And it’s a happy occasion!

I feel the need to say that because a lot of times in the past year when people wish me Happy Something, it’s not happy at all. Birthday? Not happy, a cruel demarcation of time and my waning fertility. Hanukkah and Christmas? Not happy, as my matching PJ sets (mom, dad and baby) sit in my parent’s basement because I can’t have them in my house.

But anniversary? Definitely happy. I’m so, so happy that I found a partner, and that he has been everything and more to me.

Last year on our first anniversary of marriage, I was on a hiatus from the blog, and kind of on a hiatus from life in general. But this year, I need to celebrate it. In fact, I had a completely different blog scheduled to go out today and I delayed it because this is more important.

There’s a trend on TikTok at the moment that says “please explain to me what you mean by marriage is hard,” and then people stitch together moments of their husbands leaving food on the counter, or leaving their dirty socks beside, not inside, the hamper.

All of those things are hard. But you know what’s REALLY hard? Having your first child die in the first year of your marriage. That is brutally hard. And you know the tough part? In the second year of marriage, your child is still dead. Hard.

But we’re still here.

I’ve seen a meme on Instagram before that says you can predict how badly a relationship is going by how much the couple writes mushy stuff about each other on social media. I consider myself exempt from that. My sweet husband had literally no idea I was going to write this. Hell, I didn’t know either until I couldn’t stop reflecting and decided to put my thoughts in a document at midnight last night. To be honest, he probably won’t love this post (way too many private feelings on the internet!), but it’s all true.

Marriage is hard. But it’s also the best thing ever.

We chose to get married at a resort in Mexico, and we knew we probably wouldn’t be the only couple with the same idea. The resort was like a well-oiled machine, they clearly hosted weddings there often. But when we arrived, we realized there was actually only one other couple getting married the same day/weekend as us, and coincidentally, the groom had the same name as my husband! We ran into them after each of our ceremonies, when we were both walking around the hotel with our respective photography teams taking pictures. We even made our photographers take a photo of the four of us together!

Three months after our wedding, we were on our belated honeymoon in Curacao when I got a text from the bride. Her husband was in a horrific accident, and he had died. She told me to “cherish every day.”

I won’t say I have been cherishing every day, some of them have been really, really shitty, but I have definitely been trying my best to cherish my relationship.

In classic wedding vows, you say, “in sickness and in health.” I never realized how much that would be necessary in our first few years of marriage, both in physical and mental health. I used to cringe when I heard brides say to their grooms in their vows that their husbands-to-be were their best friends. How strange, while surrounded by their real best friends up at the altar!

Now, I get it. Not only do I get it, I say it literally every day to my husband, “you’re my best friend in the whole wide world.” Like, probably 5 times a day. He is the only person who has been there every day, and there are many days when he is the only person I talk to.

He was not just there with me in the hospital, but he’s there with me at home. He has seen the many times I’ve been crying in the corner of the couch. He has talked to me on the phone during a panic attack. He has left the room because his presence was making me nervous while I was taking my blood pressure. Sometimes he leaves me alone, especially at my request. But sometimes, he knows I could use a distraction and he plans a staycation, or a vacation, or he just calls an Uber and takes me to Brookfield Place so I can walk around and get some physical activity without getting sweaty. He gets me, he accepts me, and he’s there for me.

Every relationship has trials and tribulations. I didn’t realize our first bout of them would arrive so quickly, but they did.

I don’t think anyone in the world would come to me for relationship advice. Mostly because I’m a hot mess and I don’t think anyone would come to me for any kind of advice. But if anyone ever asked me, I would say communication is key. This seems obvious, but especially in our relationship where we are so completely different in our personalities and communication styles, it’s important that we keep open lines of both talking and listening. We’ve done a lot of both over the past two years, and I hope it continues.

I know our next year will be even better. Not because I know we will have a living baby, that is very much out of our hands. But I know, because we love each other more every day. Happy anniversary my love (if you ever read this). I love you to the next galaxy and back.

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Pregnancy After Loss

No, It’s Not My First

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monochrome photography of children on swing

Three weeks after Maliyah died, I reached out to the Pregnancy Loss Support Program, and they matched me with a Peer Counselor, who I spoke with a few times. The thing I remember most from our conversations was when I asked her when I would feel normal again, and she said “never.” She said, “even if you decide to have another pregnancy, a random stranger will stop you in the grocery store aisle and ask you when you are due, and if it’s your first. And for the rest of your life, you’re going to face that, and other questions that have no good answers.”

At the time, I thought she was insane. Another pregnancy? Over my dead body. Literally.

But she was right, of course. I am still non-pregnant-passing in most random-stranger scenarios, but at the gym, in spandex and tank tops, it’s become obvious.

The issue is: it’s not my first. But unless I want to follow up with “my first one is dead,” then I never quite know what to say. If I say I have another kid, then they ask how old she is (dead) or how I feel about being a mom of 2 (probably not the way they think I’d feel, since one is dead). If I do say it’s my first, then people assume I don’t know what’s coming, and offer their unwelcome advice, and I do know.

When I first started to tell my coaches at the gym that I was pregnant, only one of them knew about my pregnancy last year. For the ones who didn’t know about it, I figured they would ask me if I wanted modifications for certain exercises, and I wanted to nip that in the bud. To get ahead of that question, I came in for the kill with the overshare. After their squeals of excitement, I said, “I don’t think you know this, but I was also pregnant last year. The baby died, and I almost died. So, this time around I have a very large team of doctors giving me a lot of advice, and I’ll be following that advice and making some of my own modifications.” This was usually followed by shock, nods, a few “I’m so sorries” and “of courses,” and from then on, I was free to take things at my own pace, unbothered.

I wish I didn’t have to be so blunt, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of playing dumb. I didn’t want to pretend I needed help with a modification for a cross-body woodchop when I was already 25.5 weeks pregnant less than a year ago. I knew what to do and what not to do, and I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself.

It’s not my first. I know what exercises to modify. I know what foods not to eat. I know to try not to sleep on my back. I know to take the trash out daily because the smell makes me want to vomit. I know every test and scan that exists. I know how my body will look and change and feel. I know, because I’ve done it before. RECENTLY.

This time, I also have a huge team of doctors giving me (sometimes conflicting) medical advice, so I don’t need any more people’s advice, especially less qualified people. I now have the BEST OF THE BEST on my team, experts in their field, sometimes the foremost in their field in the country, thanks to living in New York. They know their shit. As I said to someone recently, “you know the saying, ‘there are too many cooks in the kitchen?’ Well, I have too many doctors in my uterus.”

Also, my pregnancy is not a normal one. Most people under the age of 85 don’t have a nephrologist on speed dial. Therefore, while some coaches at my gym may have training in coaching normal pregnant people, they probably don’t have training coaching “special needs Emily.” I don’t blame them, even most doctors wouldn’t know! Heck, I had different advice from 2 doctors on my own team! But the point is, this ain’t my first rodeo. I know more about the specifics of pregnancy than probably 99.9999% of childless non-doctors; I’ve dedicated the past year of my life to research and information-gathering.

I also know more about pregnancy than a large percentage of people with living children. That’s because I’ve now gone through 2/3 of a pregnancy twice, first with a very complicated pregnancy, and now, a super high risk one. I know every possible scan, every possible blood test, every possible complication. I know the different trisomies by heart, and which tests can screen for them. I know multiple different types of cerclages. I know when bed rest is recommended (almost never) and which recommendations are old wives’ tales. Most people go through a pregnancy with naïvity. I have none of that, but I have a boatload of knowledge. So no, it’s not my first.

The complicated part, of course, is that I have nothing to show for it. How do I explain that I have been 25 weeks pregnant, AND 14 weeks pregnant, but I’ve never parented a child? I don’t. I just stay away from people, mostly, especially parents. I steer clear of conversations I don’t want to be a part of or can’t contribute to. When I see people talk about how they don’t want their kids to grow up, and they want them to stay just this age forever, I shut my mouth. Because I know that’s not true. I know they’d be devastated if their kid, in fact, never grew up. I know because mine never did.

I find that the more often I share about Maliyah as part of my story this time around, the more comfortable I am. Instead of just saying, “I’m pregnant!” I’ll say, “I’m pregnant again!” Depending on the situation, and if I’m in a charitable mood and want to lighten the emotional load on the listener, I sometimes add some humor or jest.

I used this humor tactic recently when I went to the dentist. One year ago at the dentist, I was pregnant. At the time, my gums were bleeding every night when I flossed, so I mentioned it. The female dentist said that it happens often in pregnancy, and not to be too worried about it. Then, 6 months later at the dentist, I wasn’t pregnant. Unfortunately, they assigned me to a dental hygienist who was 9 months pregnant. She asked me if anything had changed “in my general health” since my previous appointment. I said, “I was pregnant, and now I’m not.”

Last month, pregnant YET AGAIN at the dentist, I was asked this same question about my general health. This time I laughed, and I said, “it seems I’m on a schedule to get pregnant annually, so I tend to have the same issues every other time I come here! Still no living babies, but hopefully this time’s the charm!” I laughed, she laughed (uncomfortably) and then the moment passed. I didn’t want to go through the fake chit chat about me being pregnant before, so I led with the facts and a joke.

It turns out my Peer Counselor was right, people always ask about the rest of your family unit when you mention a pregnancy or appear pregnant. I’ve decided that in most scenarios, I am not going to say it’s my first. Usually when I think about the reasons I’d say that, it’s to save the listener from an awkward encounter; but it’s not awkward to me, it’s just my family. My feelings have definitely evolved over time, sharing here on the blog has helped me feel more comfortable sharing IRL. Hopefully I’ll have a living addition to the gang this summer, and he’ll be my second.

(Written at: 13 weeks, 6 days)

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Pregnancy After Loss

Gender Disappointment

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boy and girl cutout decals

“All I want is a healthy baby.” Everyone says that. It’s true, but it’s also not the full story.

The topic of “gender disappointment**” is a hot button issue in pregnancy in general, and in the “normal pregnancy” world it isn’t talked about much, but in the loss-mom-world, it’s talked about quite a bit.

In normal pregnancies, people have expectations and wants, they picture the little outfits, and the hairstyles, the sports they want to teach their kids, the dance recitals, the blue or pink nursery, and sometimes, they are disappointed when they find out what they are having. This is 100% normal and 100% understandable. Almost everyone thinks about their future and what it will look like, and it makes sense that if you find out it will look different than you imagined, it will be disappointing. That’s human nature.

With loss moms, it’s that, and a dumpster fire more. With loss moms, you not only had those dreams, but you had the baby! You possibly already had the clothes. The nursery. The pink carrier on your registry. And then, it’s all ripped away. Not just the tangible items but the hopes and the dreams. It was so close and within reach, and then it was so far. Therefore, the “gender disappointment” can hit even harder.

With my first pregnancy, we decided we didn’t want to know what the sex of our baby was. Chris didn’t feel as strongly as me, but he agreed with the decision, and he said he didn’t care, he would love them either way. I had my own reasons, and one of them was exactly that: I’d love them either way. But there were other, less benevolent and more rational reasons, too.

  1. I always wished I had a big brother growing up. Or a little sister. Those were the two things I didn’t have. I had a big sister and a little brother. So I figured, if I had a boy first, I’d be elated! Then I’d have that possibility of having a family with a big brother and little sister! We could have a built-in someone to look out for her.
  2. I knew I wanted “at least” one girl at some point. I literally have a business styling hair, I was MADE to be a girl mom! Plus, tutus and sparkles and headbands are kinda my thing.

For those two reasons, I knew it didn’t matter. Girl first, FAB, I get my girl. Boy first, FAB, I get my “older brother” dream. The third reason we chose not to find out the sex of our first baby was:

3. We wanted to be “surprised.” I figured, this was one of the final surprises left in the world, and I wanted to have that amazing moment in the hospital. Besides, like I said, I’d love them either way.

HA! We sure got a surprise. A dead one. Not exactly the surprise we planned for. But you know what they say about plans… We did love her, and do love her like we planned, but the surprise part? We did not love that.

Early on, post-loss, Chris and I decided we definitely wanted to learn the sex of our next baby. We decided this LONGGG before I was pregnant again, possibly even while I was still in the hospital.

We made this decision for a few reasons. Some were for Chris. We both wished he had more of a connection with Maliyah before she died. He came to literally every appointment and ultrasound with me (and there were a lot!). He knew all the facts, he sat (and slept) by my side in the hospital for a week. He spent time with her after she was born. But, the bond of a carrying parent is just not the same as the bond of the non-carrying parent during pregnancy. And since we only knew her during pregnancy, it felt uneven. We talked about how we could help him create a stronger bond, if there was a “next time,” and one of the things we agreed upon was knowing the sex. Knowing the sex would help him create more vivid and specific dreams of the future for his child. He could think about himself as a “girl dad” or a “boy dad” and what that meant to him.

As for the reasons for the decision for me, I knew for a FACT that I had enough surprises for a lifetime. I was full up on surprises. Done. Also, I know now that 99.9999% of pregnancy is completely out of my control. For an anxious control freak like me, this is not an ideal situation. Therefore, I knew I needed to control the controllables. I needed to gather absolutely every piece of information that I could. That included everything from reading scientific, peer-reviewed papers on placental health, and it meant learning the sex of my baby ASAP. I know now, I do not do well with surprises, and I needed time to adjust to the news. I did not want that “adjustment” time to be in the delivery room.

We knew we wanted to know, and we wanted to know FAST. Unlike last time, where I didn’t care which sex I was carrying, this time, I felt completely different.

I wanted a girl. Everyone says they “just” want a healthy kid. And that is not a “just” for me. OBVIOUSLY that’s what I wanted. That’s what I still want. I know it’s not a given. I know it’s out of my control. I know I’d do ANYTHING to get a healthy baby. But still… I wanted a girl.

So why did I want a girl? I asked myself this question millions of times. In my head. On support groups. In therapy. To Chris. Why did it matter to me? I listened to a few podcasts and learned I was not alone. It seems almost ALL loss parents want the same sex next baby as the one they lost.  At first, it seemed so strange to me. I knew this next baby would never replace Maliyah. I knew she was gone, and I knew she was irreplaceable. A new baby doesn’t replace a dead baby.

But still, deep down in my soul, I wanted a girl. By the time I saw those two lines on the pregnancy test again, I had 9 months of images in my mind. Maliyah as a baby. Maliyah as a toddler. Maliyah as a teenager. Maliyah at her wedding. Those were all milestones I would never see because they would never come to fruition. I had a girl, but I didn’t get to raise her. I carried her and I birthed her, but I never got to dress her, create a bond with her, TALK with her, learn her hobbies, braid her hair, it was all missed opportunities. I felt in my soul that I needed a girl back. Not the same girl, but a girl. I needed a chance to do all of the things I had imagined for Maliyah throughout the previous year.

I’m not getting a girl. I had my girl, and she died. And now, we’re having a boy.

When we first received the results, I thought I’d have a lot more trouble with the sex.  I thought all of the thoughts I had above would come to me in a deluge. It didn’t happen that way, they didn’t come to me until many weeks later. Instead, when we first received the news of our new baby brother, I just had trouble accepting he was a human. The more I thought of him as a boy, the more I thought of him as a person. Of course, I have no idea what his likes and dislikes will be, whether he will love laptops or lacrosse more, but just thinking of him as a person who HAS likes or dislikes was really troubling. I was so terrified to think of him as real. Thinking of him as a boy was TOO real. The more I thought about him as a person and not just a parasite, the more I was terrified to become attached. Those feelings lasted for a month, maybe more. We held on to the information without telling a soul (besides my therapist) for 7 weeks.  I felt that sharing the news about him being a boy would immediately make me attached to him. But then, I listened to a podcast that said, if you’re afraid of becoming attached, it means you’re already attached. And I knew it was true.

Part of me is happy I am carrying a baby of the opposite sex. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am constantly looking for differences between this pregnancy and my previous one. I am trying so hard to see a different outcome, so any time I can hold on to a tangible difference between pregnancies, I am hoping that is more evidence that a different outcome is in our future. Is this rational? Absolutely not. There is literally zero evidence that Y chromosomes in general cause less pregnancy complications. But for me, I am trying to trick myself into believing that this marks an important change.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling less kind to myself, I think I caused this. Not just that I caused myself to have a boy this time around because I wanted a different pregnancy, but also that I somehow cause Maliyah’s death because I originally said I wanted a boy as my firstborn. I have been to many, many hours of therapy and I am very aware that my thoughts did not cause Maliyah’s death. But sometimes, I still let my mind go there.

Practically speaking, raising a boy terrifies me. I don’t know anything about boys. I barely understand my husband. I think about the different relationships of men and their mothers versus women and their mothers, and it makes me sad. I know I call my mom to chat 3-4 times/week, and I know my brother only calls when he needs something. I know I talk about my feelings constantly, and my husband pushes them down. I know most men don’t love a tutu and a bow, and I live for them. I don’t know how to teach someone to pee standing up. None of those things mean I won’t be a good mom, they just mean I may have a steeper learning curve.

There’s another piece, too. I won’t just be raising a man, I’ll be raising a black man in the United States. I know there are so many things about his experience in the world that I simply won’t be able to relate to. Not just that, but there are also fears. I know that the United States is not a safe place to be a black man. I know that while things are possibly moving toward equity, we have a longggg way to go. This is a whole other post that I don’t feel fully qualified to speak on, but I will just say, it’s something I think about a lot. I know that I am anxious in pregnancy because I fear for my boy and he’s inside me, and I know that fear for his safety is not likely to go away after he is born.

Since I found out about having the opposite sex pregnancy, I have been talking to a lot of loss moms and listening to podcasts about this, and I have realized that almost all loss moms who had girls in their first pregnancy, have a boy in their subsequent ones. I actually could not find one single person who had a girl who died, then another girl. I found a couple who had a boy and then another boy, but ZERO girl-girl. The good news about this is, I’m not alone. There are many stories out there for me to see, and there are many people for me to talk to. I have realized that all of my feelings are common. Many loss moms who had girls who died have talked to me about how they notice things they never looked at before, like moms and their sons of all ages on the subway. I have tried to look closely for these things, too. I need to reframe my whole schema of what my mothering relationship will look like, so I am seeking out examples. I find much more in common with moms-who-lost-girls-and-have-living-boys than just mom-who-have-living-boys. There’s this grief and sadness that pairs together with extreme happiness of living children that I find myself at the intersection of. This is another example of feeling “other,” like I talked about in my post on being a “loss mom not a regular mom.”  I know this “mom-of-living-boy-after-dead-girl” seems like a small sample size, but now that I exist in these spaces, I know there are actually very, very many of us.

I don’t think my what-ifs will ever go away. I will continue to wonder if my only girl I will ever get to parent is dead. I will continue to think about my unrealized dreams for her. But I am also now looking to create new dreams for our son. I find myself constantly looking at old photos of Chris as a kid, and seeing how cute he was. When we have conversations, I look at his face and his gesticulation, and I notice little things in him, mannerisms and physical traits, that I hope our son inherits. I watch him snoring away at night, and wonder if our little boy will sleep as soundly.  One thing I know for sure is that we will love him a LOT. He is already loved so much, and we can’t wait to meet him (but not too soon)!

**Sidenote: I know the term “gender disappointment” is a misnomer, since what we are actually talking about is genitalia and sex, not gender expression, but historically, the term has been “gender disappointment” so that’s what I used here. Also, “sex disappointment” reminds me of a whole other thing: what most women experience throughout their 20’s.

(Written at: 13 weeks, 3 days)

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